Peak: Larry Bird vs Kevin Durant - who you got?

[Colbinii]

And to add.. in 1987 and 88 before his bone spur injury, Bird was a lights-out scorer! While being the best passer on his team and not having a system / other ATG perimeter creator serving as aid, some of his numbers those two years very much pop out and manifest themselves in how good the 1987/88 C's offense was while the roster was somewhat hampered within this span.

The 1997 and 1988 rosters are similar to 1985 and 1986. What are you talking about?

Was just adding on.. McHale was injured during this span as well. He played through a foot injury in 1987 and missed more time than usual nursing it in 1988.

See Below:

Spoiler:

https://fadeawayworld.net/kevin-mchale-unbelievably-played-77-of-82-games-despite-having-a-fractured-foot-in-1987

Bird Stats sans McHale:

Spoiler:

Read on Twitter

?s=20

I cited 1987/88, as I see those as Birds' offensive peak - where the 88 RS Celtics had the best offense of the era along with the 1983 Nuggets..

From Ben Taylor's Larry Profile:

And in 1986, McHale missed 14 games and the team played at a 61-win pace (7.3 SRS) without him.

Meanwhile, Boston’s offense improved, commensurate with Bird’s individual growth. The ’85 and ’86 teams were just under 5 points better than league average offensively.9 In ’87 and ’88, Boston posted a staggering +7.3 rORtg in 148 games with Bird and McHale. Bird was the cornerstone of two of the 25-best offenses in league history, including the 1988 squad, the best of all time to that point, surpassing even the ’87 Lakers in regular season efficiency. Boston’s true shooting percentage was 58.8 percent that year, a record that would stand until the 2016 Warriors shot 59 percent in their 73-win season.

Do you consider this Birds peak though? He dropped off defensively.

Also, a bit weird to say "McHale had an injured foot" in 1987...and yet he still was extremely productive [26/10/3 player on +12 TS%]. Cool, he was injured, he was also a Top 10 player in the NBA...

Ainge, Parish and Johnson were all still very good NBA starter in 1987. This isn't the 2013 Thunder we are talking about here.

[rk2023]

The 1997 and 1988 rosters are similar to 1985 and 1986. What are you talking about?

Was just adding on.. McHale was injured during this span as well. He played through a foot injury in 1987 and missed more time than usual nursing it in 1988.

See Below:

Spoiler:

https://fadeawayworld.net/kevin-mchale-unbelievably-played-77-of-82-games-despite-having-a-fractured-foot-in-1987

Bird Stats sans McHale:

Spoiler:

Read on Twitter

?s=20

I cited 1987/88, as I see those as Birds' offensive peak - where the 88 RS Celtics had the best offense of the era along with the 1983 Nuggets..

From Ben Taylor's Larry Profile:

And in 1986, McHale missed 14 games and the team played at a 61-win pace (7.3 SRS) without him.

Meanwhile, Boston’s offense improved, commensurate with Bird’s individual growth. The ’85 and ’86 teams were just under 5 points better than league average offensively.9 In ’87 and ’88, Boston posted a staggering +7.3 rORtg in 148 games with Bird and McHale. Bird was the cornerstone of two of the 25-best offenses in league history, including the 1988 squad, the best of all time to that point, surpassing even the ’87 Lakers in regular season efficiency. Boston’s true shooting percentage was 58.8 percent that year, a record that would stand until the 2016 Warriors shot 59 percent in their 73-win season.

Do you consider this Birds peak though? He dropped off defensively.

Also, a bit weird to say "McHale had an injured foot" in 1987...and yet he still was extremely productive [26/10/3 player on +12 TS%]. Cool, he was injured, he was also a Top 10 player in the NBA...

I have 1986 as his peak overall, 87/88 as his offensive apex. I would go with 88 at full health -> but prefer 87 all-in-all due to Bird's bone spur. As for McHale, I am not denying his efficacy.. just pointing out what happened.

[Colbinii]

Was just adding on.. McHale was injured during this span as well. He played through a foot injury in 1987 and missed more time than usual nursing it in 1988.

See Below:

Spoiler:

https://fadeawayworld.net/kevin-mchale-unbelievably-played-77-of-82-games-despite-having-a-fractured-foot-in-1987

Bird Stats sans McHale:

Spoiler:

Read on Twitter

?s=20

I cited 1987/88, as I see those as Birds' offensive peak - where the 88 RS Celtics had the best offense of the era along with the 1983 Nuggets..

From Ben Taylor's Larry Profile:

Do you consider this Birds peak though? He dropped off defensively.

Also, a bit weird to say "McHale had an injured foot" in 1987...and yet he still was extremely productive [26/10/3 player on +12 TS%]. Cool, he was injured, he was also a Top 10 player in the NBA...

I have 1986 as his peak overall, 87/88 as his offensive apex. I would go with 88 at full health -> but prefer 87 all-in-all due to Bird's bone spur. As for McHale, I am not denying his efficacy.. just pointing out what happened.

Sure. I would take both 1987 and 1988 rosters very easily over any OKC roster Durant played on except 2012, which isn't even close to Durant's peak.

[capfan33]

It isn't intended to be hostile. NoMoreRings said "If you think it is a good comparison then you don't know something". That's not really productive to conversation about who is better. Instead, he is saying "If you don't think Bird is better [like I do] then you don't know how good Bird was ."

The fact is, Bird was not an ATG playoff scorer and he played on relatively loaded teams in terms of talent. If you value playoff scoring/resiliency and believe Durant's defense was better, then the argument can be made for Durant.

Except that Durant's scoring resiliency was terrible in OKC and he had an even more loaded team in GS and Bird's was actually quite good during 84-86. Yea there are some caveats, with the Thunder's lacking offensive talent at times and excusing Bird's bar fight, but peak for peak I don't think there's much of a gap at all. They both had pretty notable limitations in the playoffs.

First off, this is about Peaks, and I think it is fair to say Durant peaked in 2017 as a scorer playing with a team where spacing was a premium. Related to this, the OKC thunder had god awful spacing, and in stating "The 2017 Warriors were loaded" then it is also to fair acknowledge just how poorly the spacing was around Durant during a majority of his time in Oklahoma City.

Furthermore, Durant was terrific scoring the ball in the 2021 post-season, scoring a blistering 34 PPG on 64 TS%.

Now, going back to his OKC days, while his efficiency wasn't great, he went against some ATG defenses with sub-par help. His 2013 series against Memphis [A 100.3 Drtg with Peak Tony Allen on the perimeter] when Durant didn't have Russell Westbrook while Kevin Martin or "14 MPG Reggie Jackson" was the teams second best offensive player. The 2014 series against the Spurs [102.4 Drtg] with KD posting 26 PPG on 56 TS% [against a Top 3 defense on the year] is terrific.

Then we have Bird, who in 1985 was playing with Dennis Johnson, Robert Parish, Kevin McHale, Danny Ainge and Cedric Maxwell--and may I remind you all these players were relatively within their primes [Ages 25-31]. 1986 is a similar story, with 6th man Walton [a very savvy player] in place of Maxwell [but really, the balance of 5 starters all averaging > 15 PPG is unheard of in the NBA].

But hey, let's make the claim Durant's scoring efficiency was horrible, without acknowledging the surrounding teammates [and missing teammates like 2013] while ignoring the perfect setting Bird was operating in. Perfect.

I mean the thing is Durant derives the vast majority of his impact from scoring because he's not that great at anything else. With that in mind, 26PPG on 56 TS% is very good, but hardly earthshattering in the grand scheme of things, especially when you're comparing him to someone like Bird. Also, I did acknowledge that the team around Durant wasn't ideal.

I also have a hard time buying scoring numbers in general over the past few years even though, yes, he did score incredibly well in the 2021 postseason. Of course, he followed it up with a pretty terrible performance against an admittedly incredible defense.

I can buy Durant having closer to average postseason resilience when you balance all the different factors but I don't think it's some huge feather in his cap compared to Bird.

[dygaction]

Bird is a better playmaker and leader, everything else should go to Durant.

I have Bird as a better offensive player and defensive player.

relative to their ages maybe, but in vacuum or play in today, no

[VanWest82]

Bird was not a better defensive player than KD. C'mon. Let's not get fooled by Warriors line up data unless you're going to try to seriously argue KD miraculously became a much better day-to-day defender post achilles in Brooklyn.

That said, Bird's passing was on another level. To me, that's the difference.

[rk2023]

Bird was not a better defensive player than KD. C'mon. Let's not get fooled by Warriors line up data unless you're going to try to seriously argue KD miraculously became a much better day-to-day defender post achilles in Brooklyn.

That said, Bird's passing was on another level. To me, that's the difference.

Young Bird absolutely was. A lot of his defensive goodness isn’t measured in box scores, aside for him being one of the best rebounding forwards since the 3P-line. Very good at rotating, communicating, sending help, and playing the passing lanes. Durant probably edges out as a rim protector due to the stature he plays at, but there is more to off-ball defense.. which I give the advantage to Bird

[SeattleJazzFan]

bird, but it's close.

[VanWest82]

Bird was not a better defensive player than KD. C'mon. Let's not get fooled by Warriors line up data unless you're going to try to seriously argue KD miraculously became a much better day-to-day defender post achilles in Brooklyn.

That said, Bird's passing was on another level. To me, that's the difference.

Young Bird absolutely was. A lot of his defensive goodness isn’t measured in box scores, aside for him being one of the best rebounding forwards since the 3P-line. Very good at rotating, communicating, sending help, and playing the passing lanes. Durant probably edges out as a rim protector due to the stature he plays at, but there is more to off-ball defense.. which I give the advantage to Bird

Durant is also a better on-ball defender. I think you could make an argument that Bird was a better off-ball defender if we just look at their early career exploits, but it gets trickier when looking at their primes. It's not an accident that guys have shot worse against KD than their average (3-7% worse) every year we've had camera tracking, and a good portion of those will be help contests.

I always thought it was noteworthy how badly OKC fell off defensively in 2015 when KD got hurt. They'd been around top 5 the previous couple of years, and were on pace for that again in 14/15 but finished 16th largely due to losing KD (and playing Kanter more). And you might say, well why didn't their DRTG go back down in 15/16? It did with KD on.

I don't think we get to on one hand say that rim protection is more value but then discard it in debates like this. KD's shot contests have been steadily rising since the mid 2010s and he's consistently ranked as one of the better shot contesters inside the arc. We've seen him basically guard 1-5, albeit not on a regular basis and more so because that's how the game is played now. Bird wasn't asked to do that, thankfully for him.

Bird wasn't guarding the best player, stopping POA, or protecting the rim as primary duties (i.e. the most valuable defensive attributes). He was a good overall defender pre-87 but I don't agree that whatever QBing he did is enough to make up the deficit in defensive load KD has shown.

[Homer38]

Bird was not a better defensive player than KD. C'mon. Let's not get fooled by Warriors line up data unless you're going to try to seriously argue KD miraculously became a much better day-to-day defender post achilles in Brooklyn.

That said, Bird's passing was on another level. To me, that's the difference.

Young Bird absolutely was. A lot of his defensive goodness isn’t measured in box scores, aside for him being one of the best rebounding forwards since the 3P-line. Very good at rotating, communicating, sending help, and playing the passing lanes. Durant probably edges out as a rim protector due to the stature he plays at, but there is more to off-ball defense.. which I give the advantage to Bird

Durant is also a better on-ball defender. I think you could make an argument that Bird was a better off-ball defender if we just look at their early career exploits, but it gets trickier when looking at their primes. It's not an accident that guys have shot worse against KD than their average (3-7% worse) every year we've had camera tracking, and a good portion of those will be help contests.

I always thought it was noteworthy how badly OKC fell off defensively in 2015 when KD got hurt. They'd been around top 5 the previous couple of years, and were on pace for that again in 14/15 but finished 16th largely due to losing KD (and playing Kanter more). And you might say, well why didn't their DRTG go back down in 15/16? It did with KD on.

I don't think we get to on one hand say that rim protection is more value but then discard it in debates like this. KD's shot contests have been steadily rising since the mid 2010s and he's consistently ranked as one of the better shot contesters inside the arc. We've seen him basically guard 1-5, albeit not on a regular basis and more so because that's how the game is played now. Bird wasn't asked to do that, thankfully for him.

Bird wasn't guarding the best player, stopping POA, or protecting the rim as primary duties (i.e. the most valuable defensive attributes). He was a good overall defender pre-87 but I don't agree that whatever QBing he did is enough to make up the deficit in defensive load KD has shown.

The thunder in 2015 had similar defensive rating that in 2014 without Kanter...Yes he was that bad on defense even if he had played only 800 minutes with the thunder in 2015.The difference were also huge in 2016

[s0ciety]

Societal Impact (s0ciety's metric)-6.9 (Numbers for games that go to the Championship)

"Societal Impact" good one

But really, it is "estimated BoxScore SRS swing" over a given sample. Can be applied to a game, series, season.

[rk2023]

Societal Impact (s0ciety's metric)-6.9 (Numbers for games that go to the Championship)

"Societal Impact" good one

But really, it is "estimated BoxScore SRS swing" over a given sample. Can be applied to a game, series, season.

We need to get this man an honorary doctorate in Statistics!

[OhayoKD]

Bird was not a better defensive player than KD. C'mon. Let's not get fooled by Warriors line up data unless you're going to try to seriously argue KD miraculously became a much better day-to-day defender post achilles in Brooklyn.

That said, Bird's passing was on another level. To me, that's the difference.

Young Bird absolutely was. A lot of his defensive goodness isn’t measured in box scores, aside for him being one of the best rebounding forwards since the 3P-line. Very good at rotating, communicating, sending help, and playing the passing lanes. Durant probably edges out as a rim protector due to the stature he plays at, but there is more to off-ball defense.. which I give the advantage to Bird

Bird is probably one of the premier examples of box-scores overstating his defensive value. Basically none of his limitations/negatives show up in the box-score. "# of blow-by's" isn't tracked, and obviously the box-score has no way to account for when bird picks up an uncontested rebound or a weakside-block thanks to the work of his bigger teammates.

[SNPA]

Bird was not a better defensive player than KD. C'mon. Let's not get fooled by Warriors line up data unless you're going to try to seriously argue KD miraculously became a much better day-to-day defender post achilles in Brooklyn.

That said, Bird's passing was on another level. To me, that's the difference.

Young Bird absolutely was. A lot of his defensive goodness isn’t measured in box scores, aside for him being one of the best rebounding forwards since the 3P-line. Very good at rotating, communicating, sending help, and playing the passing lanes. Durant probably edges out as a rim protector due to the stature he plays at, but there is more to off-ball defense.. which I give the advantage to Bird

Bird is probably one of the premier examples of box-scores overstating his defensive value. Basically none of his limitations/negatives show up in the box-score. "# of blow-by's" isn't tracked, and obviously the box-score has no way to account for when bird picks up an uncontested rebound or a weakside-block thanks to the work of his bigger teammates.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/dws_yearly.html

This much of an overstatement?

Bird was a high level off ball defensive impact player. As a free safety roaming the court he was brilliant. His basketball IQ was on both sides of the floor.

[OhayoKD]

Young Bird absolutely was. A lot of his defensive goodness isn’t measured in box scores, aside for him being one of the best rebounding forwards since the 3P-line. Very good at rotating, communicating, sending help, and playing the passing lanes. Durant probably edges out as a rim protector due to the stature he plays at, but there is more to off-ball defense.. which I give the advantage to Bird

Bird is probably one of the premier examples of box-scores overstating his defensive value. Basically none of his limitations/negatives show up in the box-score. "# of blow-by's" isn't tracked, and obviously the box-score has no way to account for when bird picks up an uncontested rebound or a weakside-block thanks to the work of his bigger teammates.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/dws_yearly.html

This much of an overstatement?

Bird was a high level off ball defensive impact player. As a free safety roaming the court he was brilliant. His basketball IQ was on both sides of the floor.

Your counter for "box-score overrates bird's defense" is a box-score aggregate overrating bird's defense?

[SNPA]

Bird is probably one of the premier examples of box-scores overstating his defensive value. Basically none of his limitations/negatives show up in the box-score. "# of blow-by's" isn't tracked, and obviously the box-score has no way to account for when bird picks up an uncontested rebound or a weakside-block thanks to the work of his bigger teammates.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/dws_yearly.html

This much of an overstatement?

Bird was a high level off ball defensive impact player. As a free safety roaming the court he was brilliant. His basketball IQ was on both sides of the floor.

Your counter for "box-score overrates bird's defense" is a box-score aggregate overrating bird's defense?

See bold.

[homecourtloss]

And to add.. in 1987 and 88 before his bone spur injury, Bird was a lights-out scorer! While being the best passer on his team and not having a system / other ATG perimeter creator serving as aid, some of his numbers those two years very much pop out and manifest themselves in how good the 1987/88 C's offense was while the roster was somewhat hampered within this span.

The 1997 and 1988 rosters are similar to 1985 and 1986. What are you talking about?

Was just adding on.. McHale was injured during this span as well. He played through a foot injury in 1987 and missed more time than usual nursing it in 1988.

See Below:

Spoiler:

https://fadeawayworld.net/kevin-mchale-unbelievably-played-77-of-82-games-despite-having-a-fractured-foot-in-1987

Bird Stats sans McHale:

Spoiler:

Read on Twitter

?s=20

I cited 1987/88, as I see those as Birds' offensive peak - where the 88 RS Celtics had the best offense of the era along with the 1983 Nuggets..

From Ben Taylor's Larry Profile:

And in 1986, McHale missed 14 games and the team played at a 61-win pace (7.3 SRS) without him.

Meanwhile, Boston’s offense improved, commensurate with Bird’s individual growth. The ’85 and ’86 teams were just under 5 points better than league average offensively.9 In ’87 and ’88, Boston posted a staggering +7.3 rORtg in 148 games with Bird and McHale. Bird was the cornerstone of two of the 25-best offenses in league history, including the 1988 squad, the best of all time to that point, surpassing even the ’87 Lakers in regular season efficiency. Boston’s true shooting percentage was 58.8 percent that year, a record that would stand until the 2016 Warriors shot 59 percent in their 73-win season.

It is a real shame that Bird’s physical attributes began Declining so quickly that we never got to see him with his deceptive athleticism and strength combined with the quicker release on his shot in 1988 onwards. The unfortunate back accident took away the possibility of seeing a high-motor Bird who also possessed a quicker release and smoother off the dribble shot that you see in 1987 a bit but even more in 1988.

Obviously the back accident didn’t help, but even before the back accident, he seemed best physically his first few years in the NBA as he had a deceptive springiness in the very early 80s combined with a very strong frame and extremely strong hands that never seemed to give up the ball and always seem to grab the ball when there were a bunch of players around.

[Run DLC]

Kevin “GOAT” Durant is greater